R.I.P. Paul Bargas: 1988-2012

Some sad news to pass along. Twins minor-league pitcher Paul Bargas has died after a battle with brain cancer. He was 23.

Bargas came to the Twins from the Rockies in the December 2010 trade for catcher Jose Morales. A lefthanded pitcher from Riverside, Calif., Bargas started feeling severe headaches that winter but tried to give it a go during spring training. Finally, he was diagnosed with brain cancer in April 2011.

He was treated at UCLA Medical Center and tried making a comeback going into this season before having more setbacks. I'll have more in tonight's first editions on Bargas, but I can tell you that despite never pitching in an official game in the Twins organization, he made a big impact on those who got to know him.

"Paul had been battling a rare form of cancer for over a year and on Tuesday night he lost his battle," Twins spokesman Dustin Morse said in a statement. "Paul was an incredible young man who displayed a phenomenal ability to stay positive through all of this and we at the Twins feel honored to have known him."

To get a sense of Bargas' spirit, here's a column our Chip Scoggins wrote on him last winter, as he was attempting his comeback.

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Phil Miller covered three seasons of Twins baseball, but that was at a different ballpark for a different newspaper. Now Miller returns to the baseball beat after joining the Star Tribune as the Gopher football writer in 2010, and he won't miss the dingy dome for a minute. In addition to the Twins and Gophers, Miller covered the Utah Jazz and the NBA for six years at The Salt Lake Tribune.